Part 22 (1/2)
”Heavens, no!” replied Margaret.
”Heaven help us if we do!” replied Helen.
”I'm very glad you say that. Now, my wife would never understand--not if I explained for days.”
”No, it wasn't foolis.h.!.+” cried Helen, her eyes aflame. ”You've pushed back the boundaries; I think it splendid of you.”
”You've not been content to dream as we have--”
”Though we have walked, too--”
”I must show you a picture upstairs--”
Here the door-bell rang. The hansom had come to take them to their evening party.
”Oh, bother, not to say dash--I had forgotten we were dining out; but do, do, come round again and have a talk.” ”Yes, you must--do,” echoed Margaret.
Leonard, with extreme sentiment, replied: ”No, I shall not. It's better like this.”
”Why better?” asked Margaret.
”No, it is better not to risk a second interview. I shall always look back on this talk with you as one of the finest things in my life.
Really. I mean this. We can never repeat. It has done me real good, and there we had better leave it.”
”That's rather a sad view of life, surely.”
”Things so often get spoiled.”
”I know,” flashed Helen, ”but people don't.”
He could not understand this. He continued in a vein which mingled true imagination and false. What he said wasn't wrong, but it wasn't right, and a false note jarred. One little twist, they felt, and the instrument might be in tune. One little strain, and it might be silent for ever. He thanked the ladies very much, but he would not call again. There was a moment's awkwardness, and then Helen said: ”Go, then; perhaps you know best; but never forget you're better than Jefferies.” And he went. Their hansom caught him up at the corner, pa.s.sed with a waving of hands, and vanished with its accomplished load into the evening.
London was beginning to illuminate herself against the night. Electric lights sizzled and jagged in the main thoroughfares, gas-lamps in the side streets glimmered a canary gold or green. The sky was a crimson battlefield of spring, but London was not afraid. Her smoke mitigated the splendour, and the clouds down Oxford Street were a delicately painted ceiling, which adorned while it did not distract. She had never known the clear-cut armies of the purer air. Leonard hurried through her tinted wonders, very much part of the picture. His was a grey life, and to brighten it he had ruled off few corners for romance. The Miss Schlegels--or, to speak more accurately, his interview with them--were to fill such a corner, nor was it by any means the first time that he had talked intimately to strangers. The habit was a.n.a.logous to a debauch, an outlet, though the worst of outlets, for instincts that would not be denied. Terrifying him, it would beat down his suspicions and prudence until he was confiding secrets to people whom he had scarcely seen. It brought him many fears and some pleasant memories.
Perhaps the keenest happiness he had ever known was during a railway journey to Cambridge, where a decent-mannered undergraduate had spoken to him. They had got into conversation, and gradually Leonard flung reticence aside, told some of his domestic troubles and hinted at the rest. The undergraduate, supposing they could start a friends.h.i.+p, asked him to ”coffee after hall,” which he accepted, but afterwards grew shy, and took care not to stir from the commercial hotel where he lodged.
He did not want Romance to collide with the Porphyrion, still less with Jacky, and people with fuller, happier lives are slow to understand this. To the Schlegels, as to the undergraduate, he was an interesting creature, of whom they wanted to see more. But they to him were denizens of Romance, who must keep to the corner he had a.s.signed them, pictures that must not walk out of their frames.
His behaviour over Margaret's visiting-card had been typical. His had scarcely been a tragic marriage. Where there is no money and no inclination to violence tragedy cannot be generated. He could not leave his wife, and he did not want to hit her. Petulance and squalor were enough. Here ”that card” had come in. Leonard, though furtive, was untidy, and left it lying about. Jacky found it, and then began, ”What's that card, eh?” ”Yes, don't you wish you knew what that card was?” ”Len, who's Miss Schlegel?” etc. Months pa.s.sed, and the card, now as a joke, now as a grievance, was handed about, getting dirtier and dirtier. It followed them when they moved from Camelia Road to Tulse Hill. It was submitted to third parties. A few inches of pasteboard, it became the battlefield on which the souls of Leonard and his wife contended. Why did he not say, ”A lady took my umbrella, another gave me this that I might call for my umbrella”? Because Jacky would have disbelieved him?
Partly, but chiefly because he was sentimental. No affection gathered round the card, but it symbolised the life of culture, that Jacky should never spoil. At night he would say to himself, ”Well, at all events, she doesn't know about that card. Yah! done her there!”
Poor Jacky! she was not a bad sort, and had a great deal to bear.
She drew her own conclusion--she was only capable of drawing one conclusion--and in the fulness of time she acted upon it. All the Friday Leonard had refused to speak to her, and had spent the evening observing the stars. On the Sat.u.r.day he went up, as usual, to town, but he came not back Sat.u.r.day night, nor Sunday morning, nor Sunday afternoon. The inconvenience grew intolerable, and though she was now of a retiring habit, and shy of women, she went up to Wickham Place. Leonard returned in her absence. The card, the fatal card, was gone from the pages of Ruskin, and he guessed what had happened.
”Well?” he had exclaimed, greeting her with peals of laughter. ”I know where you've been, but you don't know where I've been.”
Jacky sighed, said, ”Len, I do think you might explain,” and resumed domesticity.
Explanations were difficult at this stage, and Leonard was too silly--or it is tempting to write, too sound a chap to attempt them. His reticence was not entirely the shoddy article that a business life promotes, the reticence that pretends that nothing is something, and hides behind the Daily Telegraph. The adventurer, also, is reticent, and it is an adventure for a clerk to walk for a few hours in darkness. You may laugh at him, you who have slept nights out on the veldt, with your rifle beside you and all the atmosphere of adventure pat. And you also may laugh who think adventures silly. But do not be surprised if Leonard is shy whenever he meets you, and if the Schlegels rather than Jacky hear about the dawn.
That the Schlegels had not thought him foolish became a permanent joy. He was at his best when he thought of them. It buoyed him as he journeyed home beneath fading heavens. Somehow the barriers of wealth had fallen, and there had been--he could not phrase it--a general a.s.sertion of the wonder of the world. ”My conviction,” says the mystic, ”gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it,” and they had agreed that there was something beyond life's daily grey. He took off his top-hat and smoothed it thoughtfully. He had hitherto supposed the unknown to be books, literature, clever conversation, culture. One raised oneself by study, and got upsides with the world. But in that quick interchange a new light dawned. Was that ”something” walking in the dark among the suburban hills?